Story By: Gheorghi Caraseni, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News 

The man who drove into a huge bear in Romania has revealed his two-year-old daughter – who witnessed the incident – flinches at night screaming “bear!”

The incident occurred in central Romania on a road in Harghita County where the bear was hit by a car on the road between Praid and Sovata.

The accident took place at night when the driver was reportedly blinded by an oncoming vehicle’s lights and unfortunately hit the bear, which is said to have run into the road in front of the car.

Nobody in the car was hurt, but the bear was left in agony for almost a day before finally being shot after it was decided that it could not be saved.

Local journalist Vlad Ursulean has now interviewed the driver, who has not been named, The man, reportedly a father of six, said: “All of the news on TV only showed interest in the bear. Nobody ever cared about who might have suffered in the car it was hit by.

“My two-year-old girl was in the car that night. She was shocked and panicked. She feels better now but every once in a while she still flinches at night screaming ‘bear, bear!”

The driver said his car was damaged in the incident and no longer works, leaving him and his family of six children without a means of transport.

The man said that the area where he lives on the edge of Acasari village sees bears wandering around at night and locals are alerted to their presence as “dogs bark”.

Local authorities were blamed for unnecessary delay in treating the injured bear because of poor coordination.

A vet, for example, who was called to the scene did not have a tranquilliser with him, and nobody else was authorised to shoot the bear. It is unclear why another vet was not called to the scene.

In the end, it was shot in front of a huge crowd that had gathered around the injured animal.

As a result, the Internal Affairs Minister of Romania Marcel Vela fired the head of the responsible official from Harghita, Andrei Jean Adrian.

There have been increasing conflicts between bears in Romania and humans in part because of the shortage of food and diminishing woodlands in the country.

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